When you select “Play Movie” from the main menu of TIDELAND, director Terry Gilliam himself pops onto the screen, looking grizzled and unshaven. “Hello,” he says in a raspy voice. “I’m Terry Gilliam and I have a confession to make: Many of you are not going to like this film.”

Wow. In all my years of movie watching, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a director try to defend his film before showing a single frame. It seemed like a red flag, but I kept watching.

”Many of you, luckily, are going to love it,” he continued. “And then, there are many of you who aren’t going to know what to think when the film finishes. But hopefully, you’ll be thinking.”

”Why are you telling me all of this, Terry,” I thought.

”I should explain,” he responded. Yes, please do. “This film is seen through the eyes of a child. If it’s shocking, it’s because it’s innocent. So I suggest you try to forget everything you’ve learned as an adult, the things that limit your view of the world, your fears, your prejudices, your preconceptions. Try to rediscover what it was like to be a child with a sense of wonder and innocence. And don’t forget to laugh.”

I thought about this for a second. “So, in other words,” I said to Terry, “if I don’t like it, it’s my fault?” But it was no use. Terry had gone away. I was speaking to my own reflection in the T.V. And then, unfortunately, Terry’s terrible movie began.

But, before I get into that mess, I’d like to point out that Gilliam, who was the only American member of Monty Python, has made some incredible, visionary films including BRAZIL, THE FISHER KING and TWELVE MONKEYS. It pains me to trash him like this. But it pained me even more to watch his film, so there you have it.

Like most Gilliam movies, TIDELAND takes place in a fantasy world. In this case, it’s the world created in the mind of Jeliza-Rose, a young girl whose mother (Jennifer Tilly) is deranged and whose father (Jeff Bridges) makes her shoot him up with heroine. When Mommy dies of a methadone overdose, Daddy takes her to a remote, nightmarish farmhouse.

As in the far superior PAN’S LABYRINTH, the young girl uses her imagination to escape a brutal reality. But, rather than a richly imagined world full of bizarre creatures, Jeliza-Rose can only manage to make funny voices for the decrepit Barbie-doll heads she shoves on her fingertips. And rather than beautifully rendered set designs, we get extreme close-ups of embalmed corpses and a hand-held camera that tilts this way and that like someone put Stevie Wonder behind the lens.

Ultimately, Jeliza-Rose and her fantasy world are just as unpleasant as the irredeemable adults and claustrophobia-inducing pretensions of the rest of the film. Truly laborious to watch, TIDELAND will make you want to escape to a fantasy world of your own.

What a relief to have a movie like STRANGER THAN FICTION to recommend instead. Many people talked about this being a rare “straight” role for funnyman Will Ferrell. But this is a comedy, and Ferrell’s “straight” performance just accentuates the brilliant absurdity of his situation.

He plays Harold Crick, a mild-mannered IRS agent who suddenly starts hearing an omniscient voice (Emma Thompson) narrating the mundane routine that is his life. Confused and frightened, he seeks help from strangers on the city bus and a bevy of psychiatrists.

”You have a voice speaking to you,” says one of them dubiously.

”About me,” Crick responds. “Accurately. And with a better vocabulary.”

Refusing to accept the predictable diagnosis of schizophrenia, Crick seeks help from a literature professor (Dustin Hoffman, being utterly charming as usual) who determines that Harold Crick is not a man with free will, but merely a character in a novel that’s still being written. And, worse, the author intends to kill him off. Crick’s ensuing existential dilemma awakens him to all that he’d never questioned in his life, and gives him courage to pursue a cute baker (the adorable and talented Maggie Gyllenhaal) he’s been auditing for tax evasion.

With a clever, intelligent script by newcomer Zach Helm, STRANGER THAN FICTION is self-consciously literary. Just as Crick is horrified to discover that his life has an author, so the author is horrified that her creation has a life — and thoughts and feelings — of his own. Like Charlie Kaufman’s ADAPTATION, this story takes us through the disorienting twists and turns of the creative process. And, also like a Kaufman script, what could have been just a gimmicky setup provides a surprising array of insights, absurd laughs and unexpected pathos.

All of this culminates in one of the most satisfying and exhilarating endings to a movie in quite a while — not in the cliffhanger, exploding helicopter sense, but in a sense that makes you grateful for something both entertaining and smart.

The last chapter in a good book can be full of surprises that, in retrospect, feel inevitable. You realize that the scattered pieces of the story couldn’t fit together any other way. What seemed like random asides to the main plotline were in fact carefully placed tidbits foreshadowing what was to come. So it is with STRANGER THAN FICTION, an overlooked, underrated and thoroughly entertaining comedy.